Look Out, There's a Monster Coming

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  Seven Songs for the Week #78 - 2nd October 2024

  Jason Carty

  Last week the release of the 20 disc "Still Barking" Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band box set was announced for December - a perfect stocking filler if you have large boxy legs. It was first announced back in 2019 when the lovely Neil Innes was still with us. It's designed to be the ultimate final word on the band and it seems like a handsome thing. For the past couple of months the cheap & cheerful 5CD album box has been in my car getting regular spins. This track is a curio. The Bonzos were the house band on 1968 kids' show Do Not Adjust Your Set (which also featured 50% of the yet-to-exist Monty Python). The box set features all the performances from this show on DVD except this one, because they did it in blackface. It is readily visible on YouTube and there's one argument that because the Bonzos saw everything in the late 60s culture as ripe for parody, they were merely sticking it to the most popular TV show at the time, The Black & White Minstrel Show. Or maybe the patois of the song is making fun of immigrant accents, but I'm more inclined to think it's just aping the lame samba/bossanova sounds of the 1960s. The one thing that is notable is that even if blackface was part of the UK primetime tv vernacular in 1968, Neil Innes is very conspicuously not joining in - he knew. Craig Ferguson also did a lipsync to this in one of his late night talk show intros a few years back, that was possibly less problematic.